


Slide Into Your Heart

by lovetincture



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: M/M, Menacing Hurt/Comfort, Season 3, Touch-Starved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-01-25
Packaged: 2021-03-17 07:14:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28970406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovetincture/pseuds/lovetincture
Summary: Jon is haunted by nightmares, and Elias makes it better. Well. Better and worse are just a matter of perception, right?
Relationships: Elias Bouchard | Jonah Magnus/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 3
Kudos: 43





	Slide Into Your Heart

**Author's Note:**

> Set post-episode 102. That's as far as I've gotten in the show so far, so this could be a canon divergence kinda moment. Who knows!

Jon’s dreams have suited him ill lately. He wants to say that it’s because of Nikola’s kidnapping. That certainly didn’t help, being tied up down in the dark for weeks, days bleeding into night, and he was never quite sure if he was asleep or not. His dreams started to invade the waking world by the end. Eyes open or eyes closed, it hardly seemed to matter in the threatening half-light that leaked into the museum.

He’d started to notice that the waxworks crept closer sometimes, when his eyes were closed. They formed a circle around him, staring curiously from vacant eye sockets, the tracks of old vitreous fluid still staining their skinless cheeks like tears. Eyes open or eyes closed, it didn’t matter because he was tied tight enough that he couldn’t run or fight. They stopped before getting too close, anyway, misshapen bodies that smelled of wax and meat, staring in a crowded circle.

The smell of lotion still sparks a deep, gnawing terror in him.

But to say it started then would be a lie. Jon hasn’t slept well for months, maybe for years. The sticky fingers of his statements follow him down, rustling around in his brain and filling his dreams with silvery worms; skittering spiders; voices that almost but don’t quite match up with the movement of their owners’ mouths, like a bad dub poorly synced with reality.

Jon could do without the dreams. He _could,_ but his brain refuses to comply. He dreams in ways that seem highly improbable. He’s nodded off at his desk a few times, never for more than a few minutes, and each time the dreams start, a movie reel waiting for him just beyond the confines of consciousness.

It’s unsettling. It’s tiring.

He is _exhausted._

He’s noticed, though, that the dreams are… _better_ isn’t the word—better implies that a thing approaches good, and nothing about these dreams contains even a whiff of goodness—but… less traumatic, maybe, when he falls asleep at the Institute. Just a little.

There’s not much to go home to. He doesn’t have a cat, and he’s never been the type to keep houseplants. He hasn’t even fully moved into his new flat yet, and he finds the stacked boxes of his meager possessions depressing. Martin no longer sleeps at the Institute, and his colleagues, such as they are, now evacuate the building the first chance they get, at 5 o’clock on the dot.

It’s not much of a decision to find his way to the cot in the back room. He’s tired, and he just wants to sleep. For as long as he can.

  
He wakes with a start, unsure what woke him. He feels the hair-raising prickle of eyes on the back of his neck, the particular sensation of being watched. His back is to the door, although he knows he didn’t fall asleep that way. It doesn’t surprise him that even his body is a traitor in sleep.

He turns, unsurprised to see Elias standing in the doorway. He sighs, letting the annoyance bleed into his voice. Feeling nettled is better than feeling trapped.

“Can I help you, Elias?” he asks, as though his boss hasn’t just found him sleeping in the storeroom. As though his shirt isn’t rumpled to the point of ruin, untucked and escaping from the belt that he’d unhooked before resigning himself to unsettling dreams.

Elias says nothing, crossing the room and settling at the edge of the cot. It creaks under his weight, and Jon tenses.

“If you’re going to tell me off for sleeping here—”

“I’m not,” Elias says. “Sleeping with your shoes on, really, Jon.”

And then he does the strangest thing Jon could possibly conceive of. He reaches for Jon’s leg, tugging it up onto his lap and deftly unraveling his shoelaces. He loosens the shoe at the tongue and pulls it off, first one and then the other, and Jon is left gaping. Sputtering. His feet look so unforgivably vulnerable in nothing but slightly tatty wool socks, brown as the stacks around them, and he jerks when Elias presses a long, graceful thumb into the arch of his sole.

“What the hell are you doing?” Jon asks, yanking his foot away.

It smarts when his heel connects with the concrete tile—too hard, too fast—and Jon is at least saved the indignity of trying to surreptitiously pinch himself to figure out if he’s still dreaming. Elias would probably know anyway, the bastard.

“What does it look like?” Elias says, picking Jon’s foot back up, undaunted.

He flexes his fingers, digging both thumbs into the meat of Jon’s foot this time, and despite himself, it feels good. Jon can’t remember the last time he’s been touched. Not like this, not by human hands, for a purpose other than bandaging a wound or catching, capturing, hurting.

Well. 'Human.'

Jon stays tensed, waiting for the other shoe to drop, as it were, but Elias just continues his ministrations. “You can relax, you know. I’m not going to do anything to you.”

Jon scoffs, and Elias looks at him, pinning him with the full force of a gaze that makes him squirm fitfully inside his skin.

“If you really thought I was going to hurt you, you wouldn’t sleep here. Have you asked yourself why you rest easier in the Archives? Near me?”

He has. He hasn’t liked any of the answers he’s come up with.

“Our master’s covering is strong here. His protection. You trust him to keep you safe.” He squeezes Jon’s foot a little more firmly, hitting a nerve that draws a small, thin noise out of Jon’s mouth before he clamps it shut. “You trust me.”

“If there’s anything we’ve learned from the past several weeks, it’s that I can’t trust you,” Jon says archly. He’s pleased at the way his voice comes out, steady and sure. He feels sure for shifting, quicksand seconds, as though he’s constructed enough of a wall around his doubts to keep them out. He tries not to think of the fate of every wall in existence; time and patience can slaughter anything.

He still lets Elias place his foot down, astounded and a little disconcerted by the care he shows in the way he handles Jon’s body. It’s the same way he’s seen Elias handle everything, from stationery to rare books. He’s not sure why he’s surprised. He still lets Elias pick up his other foot, shifting on the cot slightly to afford them both more comfort.

It’s such a minute movement—plausible deniable, if it comes to that—although Elias isn’t so crass as to enjoy lording things above Jon’s head. No, the danger with Elias is in the manipulation, and Jon knows better than to trust him.

“What is this, then?” Jon asks quietly, sighing into the feeling of Elias pressing his knuckles into the sole of his foot, going boneless as Elias tugs on each of his toes in turn, letting out little pops of tension held between the joints of his phalanges. “Trying to tie me to you in yet another way? I have to warn you, it won’t work.”

“Is that what you think?” Elias asks, talking in a low voice of his own. The space they inhabit has become a church. Jon still isn’t sure if he’s awake. “I don’t need to try, Jon.”

Jon slumps against the wall, and Elias works every last ache and pain and scrap of tension from his feet. The room gets no lighter, but his eyes adjust. He can make out the clean, sharp curve of Elias’ cheek by the light that leaks in from the hall. Elias’ eyes are too bright in the gloom.

They don’t say anything more, and the silence is a relief. Jon might nod off again. He can’t be certain.

Elias finishes with a last, affectionate squeeze to his foot. He sets it down, leaning close enough that Jon catches a whiff of his cologne, spicy and barely-there. It’s subtle as a knife, like everything about Elias. Jon thinks Elias might try to touch him again, but he doesn’t.

The cot creaks when Elias stands, and Jon lolls boneless on the bed, watching the outline of Elias smooth out the lines of his suit with tired eyes.

He can hear the smile in Elias’ voice without seeing. “You want to know everything, Jon. I know you do. You can know this too.”

“No,” he says, but the room’s already empty. The lie sounds hollow in his ears. “No,” he says again, like he can make it true if he only says it loud enough in the correct tone of voice.

There are some things that aren’t worth knowing. There are some truths that are too terrible, but even as he thinks it, he can feel the words crumple under the weight of his own bloated curiosity.

Somewhere, something laughs.

**Author's Note:**

> I love Jon, Elias, and everyone in this bar. I'm new to the fandom so I'd love it if you said hi on [Twitter](http://twitter.com/lovetincture).


End file.
